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Posts tagged: Managed Print Services

On a recent webinar, it was stated that 65% of total cost for an MPS program is associated with consumables and supplies. This can be as high as 75% when we consider the A4 conversion going on. Business firms that offer MPS to their customers must continue to focus on this area to improve their MPS programs.

There are many variables that stack up to make an effective MPS program for your customers. One of the variables is associated with shipping consumables. Customers don’t want to stock extra supplies and you don’t want to ship too many supplies, so how we do find the happy medium? First, it’s important for customers to know that they don’t need to replace the toner cartridge the minute it says running low. Are your reps and specialists speaking to customers about your process for shipping toner and why they don’t need to duplicate efforts? Have you invested in dedicated staff to track toner usage and help proactively manage the program? Do you have any kind of system alerts, such as email notifications to customers, before the toner ships? One of the things you can do is make sure your sales reps can easily explain your MPS program to your customers including the importance of managing the supplies.

Another trend we are seeing is the potential growth of inkjet. According to a recent KeyPoint Intelligence study, 2017 was the year that inkjet in the office is expanding. Epson, Canon, HP and Brother continued making investments in business class inkjet and Riso launched the first high speed (120 ppm) inkjet for the office market. How does your MPS program handle inkjet? What are your plans to proactively consider the growth here to incorporate it into your program? How will you track it? As you can see in the chart below, Inkjet serialized segment 3 forecast the highest growth in the next several years.

We’ve heard the term “Everything as a Service” associated with the future of Managed Print Services. Let’s also consider “Print as a Service”. In a recent study, we found that vendors will intensify efforts to increase user loyalty by offering various plans to add service components to supplies. MPS is well-penetrated in large organizations, but it has not had the same success in SMB. OEM’s are looking for the right formula to convert SMB’s from transitional to a contract sale or a subscription type program. Other plans, such as fleet supplies, auto-order or individual device re-order will continue to be analyzed and developed.

Fleet optimization is another variable to look at. Talk to your customers about how you can help them design solutions around their workflow during your quarterly business reviews. Most dealers successful in the MPS world are adjusting or making tweaks along the way that help customer’s control their costs in printing. A simple thing like swapping one device for another one based on volume, removing the costliest devices and shifting pages to workgroup printers are all good examples of fleet optimization and right-sizing of the fleet conversations you should be having on a regular basis.

Are you using tools that can help track page yields per cartridge, volume per machines and end-user printing? By adding advanced behavior modification software, you can help drive down costs of printing by 20% or more. Simply by having tools to indicate where to send print job based on the specific job is one way this type of software can help. It can also eliminate printing and with the savings from not printing, you can help your customers use these dollars in process automation tools for their business workflow.

Currently digital tools like email are most likely replacing print though many other options exist with document collaboration tools and business process automation. Does your firm have a paper reduction policy? If so, what resources and tools are being used? How are you marketing this to help your customers? Are you considering factors such as security in printing?

Paper Reduction Policies in SMB’s and Enterprises

The dealers who intensify efforts to increase user loyalty by offering various plans to add service components to their supplies, move into subscription programs such as “everything as a service” and offer security services will continue to be on the leading edge of MPS.

Our industry has officially adopted a new acronym called SBB and it’s here to stay! I believe SBB has the potential to be disruptive, in a positive way, in our market today. So, what exactly is SBB?

Managed Print

Before we define SBB, let’s go back to another acronym called MPS. Managed Print Services has evolved, changed, slowed down and started up again in the past five years. It has been defined, redefined, renamed, rebranded and relaunched. Regardless of how you define MPS or what you do with your program, you’ve probably had some challenges here. One of the challenges that many customers and dealers have with MPS is the ability to capture true output volume and track that volume on a regular basis. Read more »

In anticipation of separating its business process operations into the newly minted company named Conduent, Xerox announced today that it is expanding its Global Document Outsourcing (GDO) Services Business to include two comprehensive offerings:

Communications & Marketing Services: A comprehensive suite of services designed to help clients transform their promotional, business, and transactional communications to enhance their customer’s experience.

Believing communications are key to customer experience and retention, Xerox says its solutions are intended to help clients manage customer communications at every stage, from consultation and content creation to production, distribution, storage, analysis and processing.

Following the spring hardware updates, today HP announced a range of solutions and enhancements to their mobile printing and print analytics solutions strategies for business. HP is addressing IT needs and end user expectations with these new solutions that attend to security challenges, cost containment, deployment issues, and device lifecycle management that IT struggles with, while also addressing end user wants such as flexibility and device diversity. Read more »

With headquarters in Brno, Czech Republic and offices around the world (including Asia, Australia, The U.S. – Dallas, Texas and multiple locations in Europe), the YSoft Group employs over 285 experienced professionals worldwide. Annual double-figure revenue growth has become a tradition at YSoft. It’s become their own personal benchmark in growth and nothing less than excellence today is an expectation. Over 90% of their revenue is generated abroad, and now YSoft has a dedicated team making an impact in the U.S. YSoft develops and supplies the YSoft SafeQ solution, which empowers large companies and organizations of any size to optimize their printing, copying and scanning needs.

YSoft has been very successful in partnering with the leading MFD and MPS providers on a global basis.

They are a Xerox Platinum Partner that has been validated through the Xerox Direct Organization, with similar relationships with other OEM vendors such as Konica Minolta, Ricoh, Samsung, Toshiba, and Sharp, just to a name a few.

YSoft cost recovery products have a large install base among many of the largest companies in the U.S., and is now extending their focus to SMB; with very competitive modular offerings.

Simple and competitive per device licensing, allowing for fast quote responses – Compliments and expands the value of your current MPS offering.

Purchase or subscription agreements available.

YSoft has a strong partner focus, with 20 YSoft U.S. employees dedicated to channel support.

YSoft manufactures the total solution for hardware and software to create a single point of contact for quality and assurance.

On November 16th, Xerox announced two new workflow automation solutions for the insurance industry and HR departments, updated versions of two of their platforms (Digital Alternatives and DocuShare), and new components of their MPS strategy for the channel.

On July 1stEFI made two announcements: One was the acquisition of the Israeli Matan Digital Printer, a supplier of grand format printing solutions and the second was the acquisition of Reggiani Macchine a supplier of high end textile printing equipment.

Both acquisitions are part of EFI’s stated strategy to invest and grow its product portfolio in adjacent markets and technologies. Workflow and inkjet have been at the forefront of acquisitions by EFI in the past and is likely to continue in the future as this strategy evolves. This strategy enables EFI to leapfrog some graphic arts suppliers and enter into industrial segments that are emerging as adopters of digital technology as a means to dramatically change their respective industry segments’ supply chains and transition mass production markets into mass customization digitally enabled segments. Read more »

Xerox, a leader in document technology and services, today announced several new solutions and services that will add to their history of innovation. Xerox’s Large Enterprise Operations (LEO) is aligning its services offering by key vertical market to connect MPS & BPO. Read more »

At its Second Anniversary Event, Canon Solutions America (CSA)unveiled the name change of its Business Services Division to Enterprise Managed Services Division (EMS). VP of Enterprise Services and Solutions, John Reilly, and VP of Managed Services, Valerie Belli, gave the presentation detailing the rebranded division.

: a strong light that can be seen from far away and that is used to help guide ships, airplanes, etc.

: someone or something (such as a country) that guides or gives hope to others.

This term is fitting for Pharos’s next generation of Mindful Print Solutions (its new definition of MPS). InfoTrends recently spoke with Pharos President Keith Nickoloff, CEO Kevin Pickhardt, and CTO Fred Schempp to discuss the release of this new offering. Pharos sees this product as “the next evolution” of its user-driven strategy. Mr. Nickoloff continued to emphasize that “devices don’t print, people do.” Looking at printing from that perspective, it starts to make sense how an analytics-based solution like Beacon can help organizations make smarter and more cost-effective printing decisions. Like a beacon, the solution can help guide users on a new path.